New mission: Playing jigsaw puzzles with Birdies Garden Beds.

[Mandy Onderwater]

I'll have a look in to it when I get a chance. I'm about to start cooking dinner, ahaha

 

[Mandy Onderwater]

How's the jogsaw garden going? Plants doing well?

 

[Grandmother Goose]

How's the jogsaw garden going? Plants doing well?

I've been hiding from a summer full of heatwaves, so everything garden is on hold but for watering what I have and hoping it survives until the weather cools down, which is usually around mid-April. I lost a few plants when the temperature hit 45+ at one point, and lost a few pot plants due to forgetting they were there and needed water too. In the meantime I'm working on sorting out my front veranda, which I'll talk more about later, because I can do a lot of the work for that in the shade, and at night when it's cooler.

The puzzle bed in the back yard is on hold until winter when I can transplant the trees back into it, until then it's sitting dormant and empty but for some weeds, and only half filled with soil. The one in the front yard, that was a mammoth job that was put together, pulled apart, rearranged, put together, pulled apart, redesigned, put together, pulled apart, support posts installed, put together, pulled apart, hidden inside the garden bed retaining walls built, put back together... it went on and on, and eventually was the right shape, the right size, in the right position, solid and secure, well braced, and filled with soil and plants. And it's still not quite finished as I have to put the reomesh trellises up on the white posts along the back of the garden bed along the driveway, another one between the veranda posts, and a third between the posts in the regular shaped garden bed beside the garden path. And I'm yet to finish filling up and plant out the normal shaped garden bed.

After all that, of the many pieces of Birdies beds I had of all different shapes and sizes, I have three corner pieces left from a hexagonal bed, two flat pieces of different sizes, some brace bars, and a lot of little nuts and bolts left over.

I decided to plant some miniature pumpkins and rainbow chard in the large garden bed as filler plants and to get something edible growing seeing as I had the space, but it'll be filled with mostly garden plants next spring. It was getting too late in the season and too hot to be planting anything else at the time, and the pumpkins seem to be doing well. Half of them are a bush variety, and I've been training them to grow towards the driveway so they can spill over the edge in that direction instead of taking over the entire garden. I did plant to have them grow up the trellis but the heat of summer hit before I could get the trellis up, so pumpkins spilling into the driveway it is. I've found a few pumpkins growing on them, they're still small, but the plants are also still flowering their little hearts out, so more might be on the way too. The chard has struggled, they wilt a lot and need a lot more water more often than I can keep up with them, so I've taken to putting the hose nozzle on mist and hooking it up on the archway and it mists the whole front yard if the wind is blowing right, that keeps the chard happy in the hotter days.

It'll all be easier to grow stuff in there once the trellises are up and the plants are growing on them and my wollemi pine is a bit taller and it's all creating a bit more shade. Full sun only applies in the mornings and during winter here I have learned. Everything that normally loves full sun wants dappled/light shade in summer from around midday onwards here.

The big garden bed has 3 worm feeders installed, made from pvc pipe with lots of 12mm holes drilled in the sides (12mm purely because that was the first suitable drill bit I blindly pulled out of the tool box). Each feeder has a pvc cap painted dark green with a cupboard draw knob shaped like a mushroom screwed onto the centre of it, painted to look like a mushroom. I had to buy both earthworms and compost worms as there were no worms at all in the yard. I've found that the feeders work well, though since the heat set in I tend to have more pillbugs than worms, but I'm sure they've all just gone deeper underground where it's cooler and will be back in winter. If not, I'll just buy some more and make sure to use more mulch next summer.

My native plants in-ground with lots of rocks reptile retreat section of the front garden is doing its job. Seems every few weeks we have a new dragon in the yard.

Anyway, here's some progression photos and photos of dragons for your viewing pleasure.

 

[Mandy Onderwater]

Ah I don't blame you - it's too bloody hot!
Too bad the bloody weather killed some plants. I got lucky we had some rain (and then it didn't stop) right when my plants were struggling.

A lot of work, but long-term rewards.

Now rainbow chard I had to google. It's a very appealing looking plant. I also wouldn't have expected pumpkin to keep growing during the hot summer! They always seem to wilt and get horrific sun-damage where I am. And I doubt we're quite as bad as where you are.

I LOVE the mushroom caps. They're so darling! What paint did you use?

I love the pictures. And your garden always looks like "home". A little crazy, a little special, a lot magical. It just gives off a "warm" feeling, like a place you want to spend time in. It'd be a place I'd love to explore, and try to spot some wildlife.

 

[Grandmother Goose]

The pumpkin is partially dapple-shaded from the worst of the extreme heat of the afternoon by the big old grevillea robusta tree.

The mushroom caps are white cupboard door knobs with bright red acrylic enamel exterior use paint in a tiny little paint can from a hardware store, which I simply dipped the top of the knob into and hung upside down to drip off, then used same sort of paint but white to add the spots.

I created the garden that way because the way I see it, gardens aren't just about growing food, or flowers, they're about using plants to create a space that we can enjoy being in. If they produce some food, encourage pollinators and other beneficial insects with flowers, support and protect other useful wildlife (the bearded dragons and magpies keep the snail, slug, and grasshopper populations in check), create a bit more cool and shade in summer, delight people with the little ornaments hidden among it all, and have a nice place to sit, take it all in and enjoy it, it's a win. I plan to do my back yard in a similar crazy kind of way, but with a labyrinth of garden "rooms" and a lot more food plants. I'll still have plenty of ornamentals out the back as well, but whereas out the front it's mostly ornamentals with some food plants, out the back will be mostly food plants with some ornamentals.

And my front veranda, which is the current project semi-actively being worked on, will be covered in all indoorsy plants such as monstera, orchids, ferns, pothos, etc; as well as mushrooms, and maybe some lettuce. I need to build a wall of some sort that won't blow down in a storm on the end of the veranda to semi-enclose that end of it, remove the ceiling to expose the rafters, fix/replace any damaged rafters and paint them white, replace the old rusty corrugated iron with new not rusty iron with a few sheets of white polycarbonate roofing to let a bit more light through without increasing the heat too much. I'm currently sanding back and painting the furniture for the veranda as I wait to save the $$ for the roof and wall materials. I'm treating the veranda as just another "room" of my garden. If I had my way, I'd do the same inside the house, but I'm not the only person that has to live here, so I have to keep the house itself a little more normal. Though I might be able to get away with doing something magical with the back half of the house - bathroom, and kitchen... hmm... [ponders how much she can get away with before someone complains]

 

[Mark]

So many amazing pics in this thread and it's cool to see the evolution of the garden too!